This novel starts off strong, but it became harder to read the longer it went on.

The core issue is that the author has a bad habit of dropping a nuke on the story and then basically restarting the whole thing from scratch. As such, a lot of side-characters and plot-threads end up going nowhere, and when the story makes throw-away references to them 50, 100, or 200 chapters later, you're asking "who?" Other times, these characters will stick around, but never actually say or do anything.

It's also a bit too... more>> satirical at times. Often the MC will come out and say, in-character, "oh, this seemingly innocuous piece of information will obviously be really important later on, " or "the reason why I didn't use my trump-card in this life-or-death battle is because this guy was obviously just a sub-boss of this fight." It starts off funny, but it becomes more and more common as the story goes on, to the point that the last arc is basically an extended joke.

I liked the premise enough to stick through it to the end, but I wouldn't blame anyone for dropping this halfway through. <<less

***** Minor Rant/spoiler ahead, skip to next paragraph for review***** I wanted to not just like this novel, I wanted to love it. I love the idea behind it, the game elements, and the idea of an MC left behind while everyone on earth goes off to learn magic. I was however disappointed. This story would have been a master piece, in my humble opinion, if after ... more>>

Spoiler

10 years or 1, 000 for the MC; everyone on earth came back with degrees of OP'ness and Magic. And instead of our MC killing everyone in one hit, he would have to be clever and have to overcome his lack of mana with his 1000 years of knowledge. I would have loved an MC that trained and acquired all the fighting skills, tempered his body and acquired knowledge for 1, 000 years then when everyone came back from what was to them only 10 years, our poor MC loses his body tempering and goes back to being a normal human being with no mana but 1, 000 years of experience. Then this story would been about the MC catching up and eventually surpassing everyone using his experience and knowledge.

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*****

In a genre known for the OP'ness of MC's this one takes it to a whole new level. I don't mean OP as in he can destroy whole worlds with one punch (pun intended) but how ridiculously OP he is as compared to other people in the world. This basically means that this novel suffers from the lack of tension and flat road that most novels in this genre suffer from except that instead of being halfway or hundreds of chapters invest this happens from the get go. As much as I wanted to love this and was ready to forgive the occasional harem or 2D female "lead/s"... the sad truth is I'm just not enjoying this novel, I don't particular hate it but its starting to feel like excitement of reading a grocery shopping list. There is absolutely no tension or excitement in this novel; for one, the intended calamity comes and goes off with the same level of impact as tax appointment... it happened and now you have to fight monsters. The deaths that happen or world upheaval fall flat, the author spends zero time expanding on how the world reacts to the first monster appearance except to show us how strong the MC is. The prefect example is a scene where one of the characters says skills are really hard to get, they are not that simple and take a long time.... next sentence MC learned cooking skill in two days despite mentioning not having any interest in cooking before since all his meals were cooked for him. In conclusion a story that should kept me wanting more and eagerly reading the next chapter its already becoming boring and tedious at chapter 50. I would have understood if this was a parody or comedy like The Strongest System, but its isn't the humor is at best tolerable in this novel.

In conclusion if you like One Punch Man without comedy, and don't like edge of your seat excitement then read this. <<less

Well, I give it a 4.

Reason:

Plot:

The authors are actually very consistent in this novel. You can actually see they studied story and world building.
Character powers and the magic system were explained enough to get a midterm between soft and hard systems (at least in the start it sounded harder, but it does get softer within the last chapters) and we usually could understand why the character did this and that just by knowing his skills and stuff.
Most of the plot was actually foreshadowed is this story, which, in my opinion, is very satisfying, since you can predict what will happen next and also helps you to accept it since it would sound unplausible later.

The addition of side-powers to the main character and making them actually the base of the character's strength was a good move. In this novel, the MC gets actually VERY strong only because he is good at many things, like crafting and cooking (and resting, lol). There are many characters who are strong physically in this novel, but MC usually wins in intellect and preparation.

Of course, to like this novel you need to understand this is a comedy novel and that this is not reality, but an expanded reality which uses a half soft system to describe the world. It means it will have inconsistency with reality sometimes, but you need to accept as if this is caused by the system the world is in.

Last book spoilers ahead:

Tl;dr and conclusion: The plot is not perfect, but this novel is mostly consistent in it, also because it's not so long. This is one of the reasons I recommend this story (even more if you are interested in studying what make stories good).

As a side note, I could predict something that happened in the last book in the third one because of the good foreshadows this novel has.

Characters:

First, our MC, Yu llHan, is the guy who got dropped out and the consequence of it is he is a loner in his mind. He is actually very rational/meticulous and tries to analyze and prepare everything in order to survive and never lose anything. His actions are all based on these characteristics. I do feel he is way too much dense sometimes, something I do not agree with his character building, but it does get somewhat fixed later.

As for side characters, I do think that this is the worst point about this novel. The side characters changed way too much as the story flows (though it is explained the reason) and it kind of hurt to see amazing side characters becoming just side characters with no self-personality. I'll explain it with Kang MiRae, who had much personality in the start but just lose it in the story (Erta is another example). This novel lost 1 star because of that.

Spoiler ahead, beware:

Enjoyment and conclusion:

I did enjoy this. The most satisfying part is the system explanation and the foreshadows in the story. That aside we have also a good amount of fun moments and reflective moments. Overall I recommend this, even with the side-character problems, this is a (somewhat) short novel that is consistent with its story and direction, and its something that stories lack nowadays.

Recommendation:
- If you like midterm soft-hard magic systems.
- If you want to read a good and consistent story (yes I did repeat it a lot because its the main good point of this novel)
- If you like to study novel creation, this novel makes a good study.
- If you can ignore the side-characters changing the personalities AND dense MC
- If you can pass a "generic" start and get into the real story (~100 chapters).

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Great story. The story is hilarious and when I started reading I couldn't stop. Really there is a little bit of everything in this book. All hail the Destroyer of All Foreshadows, Yu Ilhan.

It's good.

Nice premise, lots of twisted plot, although little bit predictable.

The fact that the MC foreshadow most even himself is bit funny and fresh. What makes it slightly bad is the ending, it's just too smooth, it's like you were expecting something you knew but still hoping for something other than that to shows up, yet what you're expecting is happening, not bad, just slightly weird feeling.

Actually the story has quite a few flaws, which make the story far from perfect but it was still a decent novel to read and I enjoyed it overall. The "World" wasn't bad, it had some interesting ideas and they were written quite well (unlike in some CN novels). The characters were... quite varying and I have to say that I disliked the aspect of polygamy, but the harem was still better than in some other novels. The battles were well described and I had a good grasp on how... more>> things were supposed to look like.

The biggest problems for me were science and certain aspects of chraracter description.

If you like stories that make sense and were basic principles of science like the laws of thermodynamics and Newton's laws are valid this might be not for you. The author has no idea about stuff like E = 1/2*m*v^2 or F=m*a, which are supposed to be quite obvious. Human technology like rifles, missiles or ABC-weapons are useless in this novel and the author was acutally quite lazy, when telling why that was the case. I guess he just had no idea how they would work for his OP protagonist or how military technology like ATGMs work in general, an example of that is when he wrote that "missiles are too big and slow to change course to hit their target", which is not the case especially with the monsters that are running around in this novel. Overall the MC is quite OP and some explanation are just really weak to be honest.

The other thing that I disliked quite a bit was about the concept of "beauty" in the novel. The characters were just getting more and more beaticul over time and at some point I was just asking myself how these guys are supposed to look like. There is basically a boundary to how beatiful you can get by human standards and you can't be more than perfect, once you reach the ideal proportions, you can't get better.

In the end the novel has some minor and major flaws, but I still enjoyed it, though I would say that it's overrated. <<less

I like it at first. But then it got confusing in the middle.

From where I am at. I feel that the author is just throwing things into the mix. It felt like the author has a basket full of folded paper that has story element, and randomly picked from that basket what to add next into the flavor.

Good read. But gets boring afterwards.

It was entertaining most of the time but eventually felt like a chore to read and I lost interest in continuing when I stopped. Some parts frustrated me and I forgot why. It's not terrible and some parts I enjoyed but if you asked me if I can recall any of what I read I'd probably say no.

It's not that terrible. My only problem here is that it lacks tension as the MC is OP and there was to no feeling of struggle of him in the story. The plot is nothing special and the MC gives you hint on what might happen next as he can feel the 'Foreshadow' of the story.

I would give this story a solid 3.5 out of 5.

It starts off great and goes solid for roughly the first half of the story. In the second half, it feels like the MC is just going through the paces to end the story as fast as possible. It feels like he's bored, and he's just trying to beat the game now. The last 50 chapters are essentially a speed run.

... more>>

Spoiler

The last 50 is literally the MC saying he knows everything and people being shocked that he knows everything. The last 25 chapters were literally a chore to read because it felt like even the MC wanted things to just end already. They even openly make jokes about wanting it to be the epilogue already.

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The tone and the charm changes dramatically from the beginning to end of the story. The story doesn't so much "mature" as it does "fester". By the end, it feels like everything that was appealing about the protagonist is stripped away, and what remains is an unrecognizable generic MC.

Spoiler

The fun references that pop up nearly disappear. It jumps sharply from a loner struggling with a couple useless of side characters to god loved by all surrounded by his harem army in just the last half... They even force everyone to turn into dragons just to ensure they strip what's unique about them. They even pull the BS where being "immune" doesn't actually mean your immune. The writing goes to garbage.

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Honestly, I wish I could simply get my time back. <<less

Very good story line, MC was very interisting and showed plenty of character progression. Other characters didn’t feel like that they were just randomly added, they had story and had their on personalities

An enjoyable reading experience. Fresh plot, fresh characters, I really like Ilhan in the early chapter. 5 for at least halfway through the story, but it go downhill since. The author can't write romance but rely on romance too much in later part of the story. But pick up pace at the end, somewhat predictable ending and forced harem. I'd rather he didn't choose any of the female characters. Apart from that, it still something enjoyable to pass the time.

This is just an average novel, the beginning plot was really good but the author failed to add more description on characters, scene, things that you cant even picture it with your imagination.

I do enjoy reading novels because of the fun emersing into the fantasy world through your imagination the author failed to express himself, create an imaginary world through words.

It stated "pretty" ok imagine a pretty girl, a dungeon appears in " grand canyon" ok, imagine somewhere inside grand canyon theres an entrance, doesn't even know what the entrance... more>> looks like.

Too much insignificant conversation, author trying hard to make something funny through this non sense convo.

MC lived for 1000 year but still acts childish. <<less

Overall it was a fun ride. The MC is excessively op. He also runs into every kind of danger possible. He also creates excessive miracles. But hey! He’s really like able. He has a complete harem where he ... more>>

Spoiler

ACTUALLY FULFILLS THEM. *Gasp!* Yes, it satisfies all the ships so no one riots.

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Anyways, although he’s really op, he encounters a lot of danger too so it compensates. It’s mostly anticipation to what he’s gonna do to kick their ass and amaze than if he’s gonna overcome it or not. It’s not like he never gets into a predicament either as there are a few instances throughout the novel. But worry not, the action scenes (some) are satisfying to some extent (especially the one on one, the many on one is mostly mob kills).

One of the things I love is how diverse the characters are and his interactions to each of them. However, there are a lot of characters, some won’t ever get mentioned again while others will only become semi relevant after time-skips. The best thing of this novel, imo, is the comedy, honestly. The MC is hilarious and his reactions to the scenarios he’s put in is out of this world. Of course, it comes with the best retorts ever, which are made by the surrounding supporting or leading characters. There’s many hilarious references that u can’t believe the author knows all this. I find myself laughing my ass off during one of the most intense fights because the damn weirdass MC and his companions that are surprisingly getting used to it. If anything I feel that the MC is way too perfect and the premise that he spends a millennium on Earth alone (with Lita?) training is overused in the beginning. On the other hand, it mostly fades away in the later chapters and is almost never mentioned again. Also he spends a ridiculous amount on blacksmithing that it doesn’t even count as blacksmithing anymore,

Spoiler

more like it’s creation, really.

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His weapons/equipments makes up like 2/3 of his op-ness.

There’s not much sadness and deaths but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any at all.

Spoiler

But in the end, it’s all needless feels.

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The Gods arc has a lot of plot holes so be warned. U won’t find any as long as u don’t look closely. The ending is quite funny and light hearted. It’s also to the point that you’re too used to op-ness that u think nothing will ever amaze u ever again. Overall it was quite enjoyable but gonna have to spend a lot of efforts to read again. But for first timers, go ahead. <<less

So this novel does good in regards of reusing the characters that are introduced in the story unlike most, if not all webnovel where it's just a one-time gig. So thumbs up for that.

The plot is not really spectacular or anything but it's enough to make me keep reading it. It's just a story about a man rising to the top through his efforts and innate talents (as a loner..).

Moving on, the characters feel a bit bland and annoying, not all of them but still... throughout reading this webnovel I... more>> can't help but hate Na Yuna and Kang Mirae, they came off as bland to me. Of course with Na Yuna being the most obnoxious and annoying character i've ever seen in all of my life (up to this point I guess). Everytime I came across her part, I can't help but skip it. She's annoying af and I almost drop this webnovel because of her... sure she serve as the main support later on in he story but that's it, other than that it's meaningless. As for Kang Mirae, she's boring and being driven by the urge to be loved by the protag. She has no redeeming point besides the role she plays later on... sure the author tries to justify her character by making her stand up for the protag and basically say "f*ck you" to the enemy when the tried to make her betray her one-sided "love interest". But she still end up being bland and boring..

So that's it I guess, the review is a bit biased and also the story is good compared to the other crap i've read so this is a better crap to give a shot at if you feel like reading it. <<less

Everyone Else is a Returnee is an amazing read, the characters and fleshed out and fully functioning. Though the later half felt rushed, in that the main character no longer strives for power and it comes to him instead. It is still and fun and exciting read. I will miss this story now that it is completed.

Op MC who's technically weak at the start and becomes strong and smarter.

Exciting but can be boring [story went down but then went up again, and other stuff], annoying "< [some characters can be annoying but they can also turn amazing] and sad T^T at times. Also funny but has many anime, novel, manga etc terms that you'd might not understand which could be lame._. ! There's repeat of some stuff but it later changes to a more serious story than MC just being op :P and fighting.

Overall the story... more>> is amazing :D, though it has stuff that you'd question and stuff that is obvious, sometimes it doesn't explain stuff but explains it later "<. Also the author forgets things sometimes in the story and never uses it again or uses it many chapters later "< !

edit : If your looking for a leveling game system look somewhere else. <<less

This is my most most favorite novel I've seen so far and I've seen a lot. The storie in this novel is the best of the novel's I've seen that is of a world with mana. I love that it starts were the world is now and the process of it developing to a greater power. I would like to see more info on relationships with the opposite s*x not just at the end of the story but in the middle end to the last chapter. I think the MC... more>> should get into the time glass and study up on magic. And of the 1000 years he was alone he studied a lot so he should have gotten a skill to go together with the studying. <<less